My Personal Thoughts about Riders of Icarus

Riders of Icarus is a MMO game released by Nexon Entertainment. The main task for this game is taming the beasts. You can catch, tame and collect them as a pet. The biggest feature for riders of icarus is that you can take your partner into the darkest depths of a fantasy world. As a common player, I want share my personal thoughts about this.

There are no specs for classes either, no real variety. But the game is interesting and entertaining. I liked the Guardian and Priest classes, though the guardian was more the classic warrior, I had wished maybe for a paladin type class. The rogue was fun too, a little squishy, or was it called assassin. Basic trinity classes. You get the idea. The Eastern version sports a few more classes than what we have, always hate playing catch up like that. Overall it is a decent game, pretty too. The classes are- if nothing amazing or new- solid, for the most part. I think my biggest annoyance is that anything besides the priest needs to chug health pots or regen a little bit.

Things I liked:

Where the game gets interesting is in the ‘pet’ aspect, I use the term pet lightly, more on that later. You can tame almost any animal in the wild. Why not foxes? That one still puzzles me as I really wanted one. Anyhow, there is a huge selection and it is pretty easy to tame these beasts. However if you want a highest grade mounts, you need to buy Riders of Icarus Gold. A simple mini game that is all about chance. There really is no skill involved, so anyone can do it.

The mount taming system. After the patch- before it was super broken, after they patched, it worked a lot better for me. The cut scenes were interesting, the story is middle of the road right now for me though. Flying- very fun! The altitude system they have in place is interesting to me. The variety of mounts and difficulty to capture different ones is complex which makes the game unique.

Action or Standard Play Modes- you can select which style is better for you, for me I like to play Action Mode, and I really like that I had that choice. However when I log in and out it resets and I have to change it every time I come into the game which is annoying. Another thing they need to fix. The attention to detail that went into designing some of the mounts is really very beautiful.

Character creation, had a good selection to choose from, but would have liked to see more female hairstyles that were long, I’m a big fan of long hair. If you make multiple characters, you can skip the tutorial. You can tame mounts, then make them into a seal, which you can then apply to a weapon, and the mount/animal/seal then give you some sort of bonus to that armor or weapon, which is pretty cool.

Comparison to Closed Beta

I was in love with the game when I first got my key in CBT2. It had its flaws, like all games, but it was a good game. I was really excited for CBT3 and mostly Open Beta because I wanted to experience everything!

CBT3 was a kick in the face for me. Performance issues, latency issues, glitches everywhere... When I saw the "progress" made between CBT2 and CBT3 my excitement went to the drain and my trust in Nexon's team being able to release a good Open Beta was little... and I was so wrong!

I have yet to find a glitch in this Beta other than my Founder's Pack was something else, but I really can't complain because I used those two Elite 900m mounts to the limit. I got a Blue Bloodwyrm and even a Ruby Bloodwyrm at Lv17 that due to the height they're at (about 500m) I wouldn't have been able to get either until almost Lv25, and once the two pack mounts were removed I still had my two dragons that could reach 450m. Awesome looking mounts too.

Gameplay

Really I don't know very well what goes in "Gameplay" but whatever. Combat is Ok, some classes along the ones I've tested myself seem quite interesting, and particularly Priest and Assassin are really fun. I insist that dodging/blinking should prevent damage, please!

Crafting is strange, different from what I've seen in other MMOs. I guess it’s because we're in Open Beta with up to Lv25 as max level but so far, I have not yet seen an Elite/Heroic recipes that are worth it. Well I haven't even seen Elite recipes other than taming marks. I hope we get more recipes and some kind of incentive to craft (perhaps achievement rewards?) because although I usually love crafting in MMOs, in this one I don't see a reason whatsoever. Crafting is relaxing and is a good break from the boring, repetitive questing this game has.

Questing like I said is extremely boring. If it will continue to be like this, please either increase the XP gain or reduce monster HP to do them faster, because it’s SO TEDIOUS. At least escort missions are not annoying like in most games.

Graphics & Sound

Is it just me or the game looks SO MUCH better than it did in CBT? The game loos beautiful, although it lacks "life". It could use some more foliage and citizen NPCs in the city, but other than that is really nice.

Sound is Ok, I haven't heard any soundtrack that caught my attention yet but isn't bad either. However, I have one complain that casters are a bit annoying, saying the exact same random thing every time they cast X spell.

Classes and Balancing

Since CBT2 I've played Berzerker, Assassin, Priest and Wizard. My current main is a Priest, and I love it. Is really fun to play and quite complex? In the first 15 levels differences such as damage, toughness, etc. between classes is not really well defined. I hated dying so frequently with Wizard in CBT2 and damage didn't feel like it was so big that could compensate how ridiculously fast I'd die.

Assassin felt useless at first but once I started getting used to the combos and getting more skills it was really fun to play, and finally Berzerker I won't say much because... I'm still leveling it.

After doing Lv25 dungeon I gotta say Wizard can stay as it is. Damage is ridiculously high so being one-shot by monsters in Heroic dungeons is understandable. My Wizard friend burned through Elite 5 like it was Lavalight normal.

In PvP feels like if you get caught by a Priest along with someone else, you might as well surrender because they'll have a CC party on you, just the priest.

Things I didn’t like:

Movement speeds of mounts, if feels heavy and slow for a mount. Reaction times in combat are slow, it seems that when you press a button for your character to attack then immediately give another command the first command has to be followed through before the next, like fully. This makes the combat chunky, slow, and heavy. I hope this is something they fix. (I noticed this when playing Guardian the most).

The game doesn’t actually close when I exit the game. I had to go into my task manager and close it that way. Also random crashes- but I suspect this will be changed for launch. Gotta keep in mind the whole CBT thing.

Not unique game play, traditional questing (and linear), just like any other MMO with the exception of the mounts which is the whole point. (I’m also coming from playing BDO which is the opposite of this kind of game, which is totally find, just different ways of thinking).

All in all it is nothing new as far as classes and combat, but it adds a nice twist with mount/pets and mounted combat. A solid game, that looks good.